<p><img
src="https://www.instantdb.com/img/emails/jul2025/s_DF8F10A9009F2A236BC7D07C4EC05DDA50E4FB82F40AA98593D3B98A1A7EA3DC_1730238267270_instant_header.png" /></p>
<p>Hey crew! It’s time for another edition of Instant News 🙂 Over the
last 3 months we were heads down beefing up Instant as a platform. We’ve
got a lot of news to share in this edition!</p>
<p><strong>New Tutorial</strong></p>
<p>You can now build full-stack apps directly from your IDE or terminal
using Instant. <a href="https://www.instantdb.com/tutorial">We put
together a whirlwind tutorial to experience what we mean.</a> If you
ever wanted to share Instant with others, sending them the tutorial may
be the easiest way for them to give us a spin.</p>
<p><strong>Use Instant with</strong> <strong>Agents</strong></p>
<p><img
src="https://www.instantdb.com/img/emails/jul2025/s_B780C84BD85687D93B6CC8B14B02AFAD6BC12F2510D1FF046702911B9D014207_1755043210572_CleanShot+2025-08-12+at+16.59.562x.png" /></p>
<p>When we started building Instant we wanted something great for
builders. We wanted to offer lots of great abstractions and a generous
free tier where projects aren’t limited or paused. To make this work we
built Instant to be multi-tenant.</p>
<p>Turns out when you make something great for humans, it also works
great for agents. Agents can use all the batteries Instant provides to
write high-level code that’s easier for them to write, and for humans to
review. Combine that with multi-tenant infrastructure, and humans and
agents can spin up millions of databases in milliseconds.</p>
<p>To that end we have a slew of releases to make agents sing with
Instant</p>
<ul>
<li>A <a
href="https://github.com/instantdb/instant/tree/main/client/packages/platform">Platform
SDK</a> which lets you programmatically create and manage Instant
databases.</li>
<li>An <a
href="https://www.instantdb.com/docs/using-llms#instant-mcp-server">MCP
server</a> that lets you leverage the Platform SDK via Cursor, Claude,
or your agent of choice.</li>
<li>A <a
href="https://www.instantdb.com/docs/using-llms#instant-rules">set of
rules</a> that teaches agents how to use Instant.</li>
</ul>
<p>If you’re interested in using Instant as a platform for spinning up
databases feel free to reach out to us at founders@instantdb.com</p>
<p><strong>Better types for queries and presence!</strong></p>
<p><img
src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GxI5Wx_bcAAjj9C?format=jpg&amp;name=large" /></p>
<p><code>$.where</code> filters now give more specific autocomplete
options and errors!</p>
<p>For example, <code>$isNull</code> will only autocomplete for fields
marked as optional, and <code>$ilike</code> will only autocomplete for
indexed fields. Even stronger query and transaction validations are
coming too.</p>
<p>We’ve also shipped improve for Room/Presence types! Typescript hover
documentation for our presence hooks should be much easier to parse at a
glance. In addition we have also exported some additional types to make
building wrappers and utilities for presence easier 🔥</p>
<p><strong>Better transactions!</strong></p>
<p><img
src="https://www.instantdb.com/img/emails/jul2025/s_B780C84BD85687D93B6CC8B14B02AFAD6BC12F2510D1FF046702911B9D014207_1755036502869_image.png" /></p>
<p>Historically, Instant used <code>update</code> for both creating new
entities and updating existing ones. Now we support <code>create</code>
as <a href="https://www.instantdb.com/docs/instaml#creating-data">as a
separate operation</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, <code>update</code> now supports an
<code>upsert: false</code> option, turning it into a “strict update”.
Like <code>create</code> prevents updates on existing entities, strict
update prevents creation of new entities!</p>
<p><strong>New essays and demos!</strong></p>
<p><img
src="https://www.instantdb.com/img/emails/jul2025/s_B780C84BD85687D93B6CC8B14B02AFAD6BC12F2510D1FF046702911B9D014207_1755034951500_image.png" /></p>
<p>In the last few months we released a few more essays, tutorials, and
even had a video of Instant featured on Expo’s channel! Here’s a high
level overview of all our new content!</p>
<ul>
<li><a
href="https://expo.dev/blog/what-if-usestate-was-your-backend">Step-by-step
written tutorial</a> showing you how to build an emoji chat application
with Expo.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEJIcaGN3vY">Video
tutorial</a> showing how to build a collaborative sketch board with
Expo.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.instantdb.com/essays/agents">An essay</a> on
how we think agents will ship software in the future</li>
<li>A <a
href="https://www.instantdb.com/essays/gpt_5_vs_opus_4">comparison of
Chat GPT-5 vs Opus 4.1</a> vibe-coding full-stack apps</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>And a few more things!</strong></p>
<p><img
src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GwFcSpCXgAAd_FE?format=jpg&amp;name=large" /></p>
<p>Here’s a few more wins that happened in the last few months!</p>
<ul>
<li>Instant welcomed Drew to the team in in July — we’re now a team of
5! He’s got typescript chops, one of the best Neovim setups we’ve seen,
and he’s making PR after PR to improve Instant’s devex.
<ul>
<li>He’s responsible for shipping the typesafety wins in this
update!</li>
</ul></li>
<li>You can search for <code>null</code> values in the explorer</li>
<li>You can use <code>update</code> for <code>$files</code> to <a
href="https://www.instantdb.com/docs/storage#update-file-paths">change
paths</a></li>
<li>You can <a
href="https://www.instantdb.com/docs/backend#custom-magic-codes">send
and verify magic codes on the backend</a></li>
<li>You can <a
href="https://www.instantdb.com/docs/init#configuration-options">configure
queries</a> to return date objects for <code>i.date()</code>
columns.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>What’s next</strong></p>
<p>We’ve been chipping away at some big infra wins. We’re seeing more
folks build bigger apps and we’re excited to support them as they scale!
Stay tuned for some exciting news next month :)</p>
